


A moment of perversion

by Roadstergal



Category: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Anal Sex, Canon Compliant, Estrangement, Gen, Hermaphrodites, Isolation, Other, Perversion, Political Alliances, Sexual Content, Social Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:18:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2779646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The people who live on the fringes - the outcasts, the perverts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kikibug13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/gifts).



> I was intrigued by your prompt in the Treat LJ, and I wanted to play with the ideas of the physical changes in Gethenians, and the social status of run-of-the-mill, non-Foretelling perverts.

It was a cold night, unusually cold even for wintertime. Some of the scientists said the planet was cooling, the Ice moving south, and the winters would only be more bitter as time went on. Mikhail was no scientist, but he believed them.  He believed scientists when they told him about the dance of electricity through different materials and about the quality of various lubricants, and it had served him well when designing and building more efficient electric transports, so he saw no reason to stop.  He would merely save his money for heavier clothing.  Perhaps he should learn the art of trapping himself, to while away his time in a productive fashion when work was slow.  
  
And all of these mental exercises were just to try not to think about why he was here, stamping in the cold outside of the public kemmerhouse, but it was difficult to think of much when kemmer was starting to fall upon him. He had made do with randomly located partners since arriving in Orgoreyn, people he met in the course of life, of activities and errands, but none had enough mutual attraction to repeat the experience.  He had gone without last month, but he was no Celibate, and did not want to repeat that misery again.  
  
He slid into the house with some trepidation.  It was noisy and ill-lit, stinking of sex and sweat, as one would expect from a public kemmerhouse in a poor part of the city.  Too loud, too many people with too much body heat, but what other options did he have? He shed his coat and held it nervously in his hands, looking around at the mass of humanity for a tenable partner.  
  
"I was wondering when I might see you here." Mikhail looked over, and saw that Pal had walked up to him.  The man who worked in the administrative office, the dark man almost as small as Mikhail, but feared, and not just because...  
  
"You look surprised." Pal put his hand on Mikhail's shoulder, sliding it up to the man's neck.  Mikhail leaned into the touch despite himself. "Yes - they let perverts in here.  They do in all of the less reputable kemmerhouses.  Some people even like them.  What about you, Little Stranger?" It was the nickname Mikhail had been given, as he had given up his hearth-name when he had left Karhide - the words were almost sensual in Orgoreyn, too much so for a person as un-notable as Mikhail. "Do you like me?"  
  
"I hardly know you," Mikhail protested.  He could hardly think, between kemmer and... being touched by a pervert. Something strange and different.  Something far more appealing than it should be.  Was it simply how forcefully, strongly _male_ Pal was, not the mutual slippage towards the other sex that Mikhail was used to?  
  
Pal leaned in closer, breathing against Mikhail's neck, putting both hands on the man, now.  Mikhail could feel himself responding to the pervert's almost obscene maleness, could feel femaleness coming upon himself.  He was deeper in kemmer than he had thought.  "Then know me better," Pal murmured.  
  
They found an unused room, a tiny hole with no windows and a straw pallet on the floor.  Pal touched every bit of Mikhail's skin as she stripped, feeling herself involute, feeling the changes wash over her as Pal pressed her to the pallet and kissed her deeply.  She touched his chest, felt his member against her, and suddenly the conversion was complete - the gentle, wet rush of bloody tissue as her genitals connected with her reproductive organs inside, enough lubricant for Pal to penetrate her in one thrust.  No need for the contraceptive sheaths she carried, with a pervert; he thrust hard and deep, but slowly, almost agonizingly slowly.  She tried to get on top, to ride him in answer to the overwhelming demands of her body, but held her down and kept the pace slow, changing angles and depth until she was crying out and shaking with orgasm. Pal sped up, then, and came with a moan, filling her with his impotent sperm.  
  
"I don't live far, pretty Little Stranger," Pal murmured in her ear. "Let's go back to my house.  I have a warm bed, and I will keep you there as long as you need."


	2. Chapter 2

"Do you know the difference between a Pervert and an offworlder?" Ilma asked, scratching under his armpit.  He was a big man with big hands, thick-browed, hair like animal pelts under his arms, who swore loudly, spat with great accuracy, and loved his drink.  Nobody was looking forward to the person he would be over the next few months, while he would be abstaining from it.  
  
"No?" Ohil asked, looking up expectantly for the punch line.  
  
"Neither do I," Ilma replied, and they both laughed heartily.  Mikhail quickly ducked his head down, putting torque to a critical bolt very slowly and carefully.  
  
"Meshe's tits," Ilma sighed, slapping his gently rounding belly gently, "I'm not bringing a rutting child into a world full of Perverts, I will tell you that.  I never thought I would see the day when they weren't run out onto the Ice, the way they should be.  I never thought I would see the day when I was _working_ for one.  My da would be rolling in his grave if he weren't frozen solid in it."  
  
"Well, what can we do?" Ohil shrugged, putting his spanner down and leaning his slender body back against the massive wheel of the engine car.  "Changes are afoot, Ilma, whether we like them or not.  The Offworlders are here, and they're all _Perverts_."  
  
"I'll tell you one thing," Ilma replied, darkly.  "If they keep trying to force acceptance of perversion on us, we will find out quickly if Offworlders bleed like other men.  Oi!" Mikhail jumped at the sound.  "Do all Karhiders daydream like you instead of working, or was that why they ran you off?  Get going, you're far too sullen from someone just out of kemmer..."  
  
Mikhail focused on the engine again.  He knew, all too well, that perversion was wrong, that Perverts were a mistake of Nature; he knew that as well as anyone.  And he had _been_ with a Pervert.  Even kemmer was a lousy excuse, when other options were available.  Did anyone know?  Had anyone seen them?  
  
The worst part was, he _did_ like Pal.  They had spent some time together in the man's small house, after the fervor had passed, and he had been brusque and short, but kindly and... interesting.  A person Mikhail wished to know better.  But he could not - he had been spacing out his shifts to avoid seeing the man.  Avoid talking about it.  He could continue with this until Pal found someone else interesting... and until _he_ did.


	3. Chapter 3

"You've made yourself scarce lately, haven't you, Mikhail?"  
  
Mikhail shifted his well-worn jacket uncomfortably on his shoulders as he locked the door behind him.  He should not have lingered late, he should not have stayed in order to let his loud co-workers with their loud opinions drift out of earshot before leaving... "I have been busy."  
  
"Oh, busy.  All is well, in that case.  Busy sitting around in the dark, worshipping the un-Pal?"  Pal let out a small laugh with no humor in it.  "You flirt very coyly, but you need to aim higher if you want to advance."  
  
"No, it isn't like that, at all." Mikhail still couldn't look up.  He picked at his dirty fingernails unhappily.  He felt like he had not been properly clean since his arrival here, in a strange country.  
  
"Look at me," Pal said, and Mikhail did.  The man's face was calm, expressionless, a mask of patience despite his words.  "You have strange eyes.  You're a genetic defect as well, you know."  
  
Mikhail shrugged.  "I never claimed not to be, Pal."  
  
"I enjoy your defect.  I find it pretty.  You're disgusted by mine."  
  
"No, it isn't like that."  _I'm disgusted with myself for enjoying your defect_.  The icy wind of late winter whipped around Mikhail's face, and he blinked away the flurries that stuck to his eyelashes.    
  
"I'm not a fool, Mikhail, whatever the others say.  I know what I am, and I have no way to change it.  Don't you think I would change it if I could?  Do you think that I enjoy the looks, the laughter, the jokes, everything they intend for me to overhear in the kemmerhouse?  I deserve better, Mikhail.  Now, tell me.  Tell me that you want me gone, that you do not want my company anymore, and I will leave you."  
  
Mikhail looked at Pal, then at the wind whipping the tops of the snowdrifts in random little patterns, sparkling in the lamplight like the gems from Sith he had seen for show at a rare trip to Erhenrang as a boy.  He did not answer.  
  
"Then come home with me.  Don't worry, nobody will see; I use paths others do not.  I will not drug and seduce you, I know your time is not here.  I want your company."  
  
Pal's footsteps were dark against the pale snow, making a path where none had been before, a path that Mikhail stumbled and struggled to follow. 


	4. Chapter 4

The wires were thick, the insulation making them firm in the cold, resisting Mikhail's efforts to route them correctly.  He persisted, enjoying the challenge of coaxing them into place, getting lost in the work as he maneuvered positive and negative into position, fastening them securely at regular intervals, cleaning the contacts with care before screwing the terminal-ends in, pulling out his little torque wrench to finish the job.

"Do you touch the Pervert's prick that gently?" Ilma's voice said, close by Mikhail's ear, almost making him jump as he shot a startled glance over his shoulder.  He looked back down at his work, feeling his cheeks heat.

"Merely finishing my work..." Mikhail replied, lamely.

"Is that what you call it, in Karhide?" She laughed hoarsely, waddling uncomfortably past.  She did not wear her pregnancy gracefully, and nobody seemed to know better than she; she was twice as sharp with her tongue and her fists as she had been before she began to swell.  "Perhaps you should go _back_ there, little bitch." She used the word for a female animal in heat. "This was a respectable place, before it was taken over by Perverts and foreigners." She leaned in close on the last, then pulled back with an unamused laugh and continued on. Mikhail let out a breath he had not known he had been holding.  He was not one to be involved in politics – he preferred to think about machines, electricity, metal and wire, interesting new plastics – things that felt good in his hands, that did good work once they passed out. But he could hardly avoid the political winds, these days.  It was not just Ilma - it was the other workers here, the workmen down at the pub, the angry voices on the radio.  He should speak with Pal - but what was there to say, what was there to do?

Mikhail found some solace in putting his tools away - wiping them clean, dripping a little machine oil on critical pivot points to protect them during use on damp locomotives.  As he closed the drawer, a churning feeling in his viscera made him pull in a startled breath.  Well, yes.  It was to be expected - his cycle was highly regular, a little calendar of his own... he would go to Pal's, sate himself...

He shivered.  Ilma's voice, the snarling condemnations on the radio - fear gripped him as he pulled on his increasingly threadbare jacket and stepped, shivering, into the icy wind.  Kemmer was starting a small fire inside of him, and it warred with the fear and cold that crawled over his skin.  No, not Pal's.  The kemmerhouse, instead – the public kemmerhosue, where people were not terribly choosy, where the light was dim to discourage the desperate from looking too closely at their partners.  Where Mikhail could make his way past sweaty, naked bodies to find a filthy girl nibbling at her nails in a dark corner, much farther into kemmer than he.  Far enough to fall on him desperately, to rub against him disconcertingly until his transition was complete, then to climb atop him and ride him until they both were, momentarily, sated.


	5. Chapter 5

Pal placed the envelope carefully on the smooth wooden table in his front room.  He shook the snow flurries out of his coat, hung it neatly on its peg, placed his shoes by the hearth, and stepped out briefly to pull an armful of wood from the attached shed. He closed the cold night wind away as he returned, huffing out a visible breath.  Only after he used the wood, the poker, and his own breath to build the fire back to merry, crackling life did he return to the envelope, picking it up and turning it in his hands. It was stamped with a mark in the corner in that strange language that was starting to become familiar to him, but the address was written in Orgoreyn.  As was the letter itself, typed out neatly on paper that felt strange and smooth in Pal’s hands.  


 

Dear resident

We have been monitoring the ongoing situation in Orgoreyn.  While we have no desire to take sides in local politics, we are concerned about potential threats to the well-being of the "perverts" of your community.  We are working in collaboration with the Karhide government to offer asylum to any "perverts" who would desire safe relocation until such time as they feel safe within their country again. Please feel free to communicate with the local Karhidish embassy, if you feel the need to relocate either temporarily or permanently.

Signed

Genly Ai

Ecumenical Ambassador to Gethen  


 

Pal folded the letter and put it back in the envelope with a snort.  He had never seen this Offworlder, but he had heard enough from those who had.  A tall, thin Pervert, a giant as black as a coal-scuttle and bald as an egg, who spoke in syrupy, self-effacing platitudes but clearly wanted to cast his shadow over all governments on Gethen.  Asylum, indeed. Karhide had always used the Offworlders as a power play against Orgoreyn, whether the Offworlders knew it or not. He would not be a part of that game. He did not cast the letter immediately in the fire, however, and was disappointed in himself for not doing so.  He distracted himself instead by starting water boiling on the hearth, measuring out grain to soften once the water was ready. He fetched from the cupboard a small, tough piece of smoked meat from last summer's trapping that would only benefit from being boiled, and a few small tubers.  The winter had started with an atypically strong bite, and Pal knew that starting lean rations early was only to his benefit.

The knock on his door was gentle, almost apologetic, difficult to hear over the song of the wind outside. Only one person knocked on his door so meekly; come to that, only one person came to his house in general. When he was lonely, Pal thought, bitterly. When need overcame his natural revulsion. “Come in, Little Stranger. It is unlocked.”

What Pal did not expect was the form which Mikhail took. Still slim and light as one of the pikkas that danced over the surface of the snow, leaving only little tracks and marks of fur, but nonetheless quite clearly male. And quite clearly uncertain about it, pulling his coat tightly around himself as he closed the door.

“I am only making food for one,” Pal noted. Not that it would be difficult to double the amount, but he felt disinclined to go to any effort for one who came by with no notice.

“I am not hungry.” Of course not. Mikhail was never hungry in kemmer.

“Shouldn’t you be at the kemmerhouse?” Mikhail reeked of sex, but was clearly not yet through – barely started, if Pal was any judge. And at this point, he felt he was.

“I was, earlier. I don’t want to be there, Pal.” His strange eyes, blue as glaciers, would not look up to meet Pal’s.

“Well, I won’t become a woman for you.” Pal stepped away, his mouth a firm, straight line as he carefully added the grain to the boiling water, pulling it back slightly from the fire to simmer.

“I know… there are ways…” Mikhail swallowed. “I want to be with you.”

And it was true, that there were ways; nature was not perfect, and kemmerlings sometimes became both men or both women, and they would rather continue with each other than find new partners. It had even happened to Pal, with his limited experience with the normal folk. Pal couldn’t help becoming erect at the thought. It was all well and good for Mikhail, Pal thought, bitterly – for most of the month, he was in perfect control of himself, walking around in the way that normal people did with no thought of sex, while Pal’s atypical member made sex a part of his daily life, a slave to this drive that was never as strong as kemmer, but never fully _died_.

“It will hurt,” Pal noted, grasping a bottle of cooking oil.

It did indeed seem to, at first, but Mikhail was soon moaning and pushing back against him, rutting in a way that was all too satisfying and fulfilling. He spilled only twice before Pal, which did not bode well. Mikhail’s kemmer always lasted for two days at least, and he was insatiable.

“More,” he moaned, as Pal pulled the blanket up over Mikhail’s naked body and walked to the kitchen.

“In a bit,” Pal replied, stirring the contents of the pot with his wooden spoon. “I have to eat my dinner.”


End file.
